I’m curious about what iNaturalist community’s thoughts are on editing common names for consistency’s sake. While iNat has a requirement that a common name exists elsewhere before it is added to iNaturalist, it has become at least somewhat prevalent that someone will make up a common name on another site (i.e. Bugguide.net) and then introduce it here. For example, the person who added the name of “White-necked Banded Bycid” to this: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/270155-Elaphidion-mimeticum cites the bugguide page for the common name, which, if you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see that the same user created that page on bugguide: https://bugguide.net/node/view/459257.
I generally don’t care too much about what the common names are, and generally agree that common names are useful to community science, this plethora of ‘uncommon’ common names for Texas Cerambycids have zero consistency in their endings. Some are “longhorn beetle”, some are “long-horned beetle”, some are just “longhorn”, some are “bycid”, a shortened version of Cerambycidae. Would it be against iNat policy to edit these to make them somewhat consistent, preferably changing them all to ending in “longhorn beetle” to align with the common names used for the family and subfamilies. Obviously, I wouldn’t touch ones with long-standing common names (Banded Hickory Borer, for example, is widely used so changing it to “Banded Hickory Longhorn Beetle” would be inconvenient and confusing), but just those that have been made up in recent years.
Separate from the question of whether the original common name is something that should have been put on iNat in the first place (I would argue that this specific situation is reasonable to classify as “one guy trying to force a common name he made up by abusing his ability to edit various websites“), subsequently editing the common name for “consistency” is effectively adding another layer of fabrication to said common name, and does not strike me as fitting with the staff consensus on how common names should be introduced and managed on iNat.
If it were actually a “common” name you could likely find alternative sources on the internet that use the variation you prefer, and add it to the common name list for that species.
An example of this is Eriophorum cottongrasses. Half of the species have the form “Common Cotton-Grass” and half have the form “Common Cottongrass”. They’re all included on the websites of various regional floras, each of which lists the common names differently. As a result there are sources for both variations as common names, so you can add both and set the priority to one or the other for all of them for consistency (probably the “cottongrass” form to indicate they’re not real grasses).
The benefit of having all the variations included, rather than editing them, is that it means users can still search by whatever variation they know and it will come up as they expect.
I think if you were to edit these “fake” common names to make them consistent that would be fine. But if they really are just citing their entry on bug guide then shouldn’t the common name just be removed? The vast majority of arthropods don’t have common names and probably never will. I think that’s alright personally, it’s cool when things are rare like that and don’t have a common name.
One thought I had though was a “community names” feature where people could vote for a “community name” but as a user you’d have the option of seeing these or not. Just as you can choose to only see scientific names. I thought of this when a common name for Promecognathus crassus was added as “Straight-jawed Pedunculate Ground Beetle”. This is one of the only known creatures to be able to eat large amounts of cyanide. It’s also not in the Pedunculate Ground Beetle subfamily Scaritinae. So in my opinion this is a boring unhelpful common name. It should have been “The Bane of Cyanide” or something like that, so it would be cool to be able to submit that suggestion myself.
Besides that thought though, you can probably just remove common names like “White-necked Banded Bycid” since I guess no one really uses them.
There has been another user that has added countless common names (also for other groups) that they do not specialize in (wrong Phylum even), but citing a separate source whos government has made up common names…these common names are worse than what this user is doing. I am not sure if adding common names is restricted to curators, but I believe it should be. That wouldn’t fix this case, but it could help prevent many more. Many common names are just confusing…
I agree with you Alex, but I’ve given up deleting the erroneous names for sake of reducing drama that never is resolved and wasting time/energy.
I delete this kind of thing where I see it, but it’s really a game of whack-a-mole and I don’t go out of my way to find them. Circular references for common names do go against iNat policy, but the rules around common names are rarely enforced. Some think that every species needs a common name…
I prefer the “delete” route vs. the “adjust” route.
No one has replied to the question regarding cottongrasses (presumably since the other question is more interesting) but I really would like to hear opinions on this (since a similar question has come up in flags many, many times without resolution). TIA
That reminds me of a name I made up some years ago: “frogbane beetles” for Epomis (which has since been sunk into Chlaenius). I suggested it to Gil Wizen, but nothing came of it.
I think it’s totally fair to delete names that have been created on other sites (BugGuide, Wikipedia) and then immediately added to iNat. I’ve done this myself and called out users for doing it. It’s still coining new names on iNat (just involving other sites).
I wouldn’t standardize names like these or other names unless there was some specific point of confusion. In cases where the difference is only punctuation based as in @upupa-epops example above, I think including both versions is fine - these aren’t materially different names.
There’s a similar inconsistency in English common names for mosses in the genus Sphagnum. In iNaturalist, there are some 100+ species in this genus. 38 of them aren’t given common names at all, but among the others, the names end in “Peatmoss” (30), “Sphagnum” (13), “Bog-moss” (9), “Peat Moss” (7), “Bogmoss” (4), and “Sphagnum moss” (1). Nobody can be expected to remember which is which, and I don’t know where the different forms originated, but it’s a silly situation.
To be fair, when it comes to Sphagnum there are usually multiple species in any given location (at least 9 in my state as far as I remember) and most individuals that are even slightly familiar with the genus would just call them sphagnum collectively. I think we need to abolish common names in this instance or just collectively give up and all use scientific names only.
Quite frankly I think common/alternate names should be removed entirely. For example, Salamanders show up when I type in “Spring” (aiming to pull up Springtails) because I guess they’re called Spring Lizards by… someone, somewhere? Even though they aren’t lizards. Not a huge bump in the road for searching for the group but it irks me a bit to see it at the top of the list.
I suppose I don’t mind common names for family/genus level identifications. Doing it for every species just seems untenable, and it seems strange to do it for only some species if we’re doing it at all.
I find that species with common names also tend to be more of a dumping ground for observations. Observers tend to gravitate more toward them I suppose. The same issue with species in the CV versus not in the CV, perhaps.
A common name - as in - a name which is in common usage - part of oral history SHOULD be on iNat so people can search for it.
We can add up to 3 languages for common names. Where I ID in South Africa, I use English and Afrikaans - that helps me when an observer has a placeholder, another clue to get to what they think they saw.
If you search for a name, you get anything that matches in any language whatsoever. See the gazapatonic misidentification thread. I don’t have Catalan common names showing, but if I search for “ant”, I get moose as well as ant, because “ant” is a Catalan common name for moose.